Week 7 - Reflection on Responses

Karen,

This week found me viewing my classroom through the lens of Gude’s Postmodern Principles too. I pondered them again while composing my response yesterday, and though this was not my first encounter with these Principles, I can’t seem to stop thinking about them. How do I measure up? Where do I fall short?

This is long and rambling, but hopefully I bring it around…I started typing and it just took on a life of it’s own!
My district conducts learning walks where a team of teachers, usually from another building, and district instructional coaches pop into your classroom for 3-5 minutes. They carry around an iPad with an excel doc open and immediately after exiting your classroom  go through the document evaluating evidence of : Use of Marzano Strategies, Objective clearly posted, Student understanding of the objective, Student work posted (with scoring guide), Cooperative learning, ISTEM activities, Product or Project based learning, etc ad nauseam. This reflective practice supposedly gives a snapshot of learning within the building. Perhaps it does, but with building goals linked to the use of these strategies, more often than not, teachers make darn sure that they are demonstrating as much of this evidence as possible on the day of the Learning Walk. In my opinion, it’s a highly orchestrated dog and pony show that kind of mirrors Gude’s description of the dispirited teacher. There is no trust, teachers aren’t actually taking ownership of the practices, but instead, demonstrating evidence of what they know the Learning Walk team wants to see. I agree with you, “Anxiety and resistance are ever-present daemons for both teachers and students.” This holds true for all of education, doesn’t it? I find myself wondering how the standards based criteria for the new Model Teacher Evaluation System will actually support learning versus foster a generation of teachers who go through the motions.

Reflection
Since creativity does not exist in isolation behind the closed doors of the art room, what if Learning Walks evaluated the type of teaching that truly fosters the development of creativity? What if they measured the really important things like relationship and trust? What if student work was exhibited, not with a scoring guide, but with a student reflection of process and perception?
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Ginia,
Each week I look forward to reading your response because I enjoy seeing your interpretation of the lesson.  We are all in the business of communication; I look to see what juicy tidbits from your world I can carry over and fold into mine.

This week I had to laugh when I read your description on using “I can statements”. This is the fourth year that my district has required implementation of these statements. We have been told that the use is twofold, students know what they are supposed to be learning AND outside visitors can step in and clearly see what learning is supposedly taking place. I frequently find that I have to dumb down what I want to say in order to make it fit the format of “I can…” I feel like I am cheating when I list the skill students are working on but oftentimes that’s what I do because it’s the easiest thing. When your goal is to foster and embrace diverse ways of thinking it is oftentimes a challenge to sum up in a short “I can” statement. I frequently stand at the whiteboard writing them and laughing, to myself, how ironic that the very structure designed to support student learning can, in fact, carry such strong capacity to stunt it instead.

 
Reflection

Rereading both of these reflections, I notice that I have honed in on what is wrong with education. It seems that everyone wants a magic formula for ensuring the production of well educated, productive, and happy members of society. No magic recipe exists. In my opinion it cannot because humans are individuals, unique in ways that go beyond comprehension. Gude repeatedly referenced the book On Becoming a Person by Carl Rogers. Could it be that an education system which promotes the development of creativity via psychological safety and psychological freedom (p 34) be the closest we could come in terms of such a magical force?